CSI’s Inequality Discussion Groups bring together Cornell faculty and graduate students from around campus to discuss and improve their in-progress research.

Iman Alsmadi (PhD Student, Sociology)

The Criminal Immigrant Myth: The Role of Conservative Media in the Immigration Industrial Complex

Abstract: Immigration detention is a small portion of a vast prison industrial complex in the United States. More recently, the need for comprehensive prison reform has started to gain attention and state incarceration rates have started to show signs of decrease. However, the criminalization of immigrants and rising industry of immigrant detention remains a growing but overlooked segment of the carceral system. Leading scholars in the field of ‘crimmigration' pose that othering narratives, along with the convergence of private and public interests, fuel the growth of an immigration industrial complex (IIC) designed exploit the profit potential of immigration enforcement (Garcia Hernández; Golash-Boza; Stumpf). Using Edward Said’s theoretical frameworks of Othering, I take an epistemological approach to explore how language and images influence public opinions related to punitive immigration policies. I argue that conservative media in particular serves as a primary source of knowledge production about immigrants and thus fuels the growth of the IIC by producing emboldening anti-immigrant sentiments. I test this claim by measuring the effect of regular consumption of both conservative radio and television on anti-immigrant sentiment. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Survey, I utilize multinomial logistic regression techniques to examine how an individual’s level of conservative media consumption influences their support for punitive immigration policies or nativist sentiments. The results highlight that net of demographic and socioeconomic factors, individuals who regularly follow any conservative media are significantly more likely to support punitive immigration policies and to harbor nativist sentiments. In line with similar work, the results from this analysis also indicate that race, age and education are significant predictors of anti-immigrant sentiment. 

Ben Rosche (PhD Student, Sociology)

Cross-SES friendships in US high schools. Who lacks them and why?

Abstract: Building on a long tradition of sociological scholarship analyzing “crosscutting social circles” (Simmel), this project examines the formation of friendships that cross socioeconomic boundaries in US high schools. I begin by showing that cross-SES friendships are less likely than if friendships were formed at random and that the degree to which students eschew such cross-SES ties depends on the underlying SES indicator (parental income, education, occupation). I then decompose the determinants of cross-SES friendships into (i) between-school SES segregation, (ii) within-school SES segregation, (iii) race homophily, and (iv) SES homophily. The results indicate that—despite stark SES disparities by race—the lack of cross-SES friendships is paradoxically not a by-product of race homophily and race-SES consolidation. Instead, I show that race- and gender-specific preferences for social closure account for much of the socioeconomic divide in high school friendship networks. Moreover, I estimate that 40 percent of the divide owes to between-school SES segregation while 60 percent is determined by within-school processes.

The results in this paper have ramifications for three literatures. It speaks to the segregation literature by highlighting the importance of racially modified preferences for interaction rather than residential location. It speaks to the literature on interracial friendship formation by exposing the limited role of the race-SES consolidation in the formation of crosscutting friendships. Lastly, it speaks to the burgeoning literature on cross-SES friendship by charting the inequality in access by race and gender to this form of social capital.